


Tradition

by Lenore



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-30
Updated: 2011-08-30
Packaged: 2017-10-23 04:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/246154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/pseuds/Lenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A yearly ritual of remembering means they can never really move on and forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tradition

The only light is the glow from the hearth, orange-yellow, sending shadows licking up the walls. This is the way they both prefer it, without any incandescent blare that might make it too difficult to ignore all the unanswerable questions. Lex sips his brandy, and doesn't react when he hears the front door or the footsteps in the hall.

Clark comes through the door, snowflakes on the shoulders of his coat, melting in his hair. "Hey." His cheeks have brightened a sharp pink, possibly from the cold, or more likely the schoolboy self-consciousness that he's never quite lost.

Lex nods to the empty place next to him. There's a glass of eggnog waiting on the coffee table, from a carton, with extra nutmeg and no rum, the way Clark likes it, and he sits, helps himself.

"It's snowing," Lex says idly. There are so few safe subjects between them, and the weather must serve for conversation.

"Just started on my way over here." Clark meets his eye, braver now.

Lex holds out his glass. "To another year."

The clink of crystal sounds oversized and significant in the larger stillness of the house. Lex tilts his head back, downing the last of the brandy, and Clark's eyes fasten on him, eggnog all but forgotten.

Covering the floor in front of the fireplace is the skin of a Javan tiger, one of the last of its kind. Clark pushes Lex down into the soft pelt, pulling at his clothes, and Lex enjoys the irony, as he always does, that they are besmirching one of his father's lessons with their messy love. Lex was only seven, but Lionel had insisted he come along on the hunting trip, and he'd spent the days wheezing and fretful, terrified of the explosive crack of his father's shotgun. The tiger had been Lionel's proudest prize, and he'd made Lex watch as it was skinned, even though Lex had cried, the message perfectly clear, that there was no room for softness in the life of a Luthor.

Every year on this night, Lex has the same thought, that his father won the battle, but not quite the war.

Clark finds the bottle of lubricant set out for him. He always needs to be inside Lex the first time, and Lex opens his legs, inviting him. Too much held-back desire, and Clark isn't careful, one hard thrust and he's all the way inside. Lex draws in a startled breath, because the rawness of Clark's possession never stops being a surprise. He digs his fingers into Clark's shoulders, into his impervious skin, and holds on, savoring the burning sense of being alive.

Later, in Lex's bed, there will be more time for luxuries, to look and taste, to tempt and discover. Lex will have Clark laid out like a banquet, his hands fisted in the sheets, the way he has to exert himself not to rip them a thing of beauty. Lex will sink into him, so, very slowly, just the way Clark likes it, and Clark will cry out, voice like a sob in the back of his throat as Lex takes him over, bit by little bit.

This is the way it's been for ten years, one night plucked from the waste of all the rest, to relive their last Christmas together, when happily ever after still seemed more than a fairy tale. It was the next day that Lex learned of Lionel's plan to destroy Superman, insidiously clever, the next day that Lex took the responsibility for stopping his father into his own hands, the next day that ruined everything. All but this one night when the only thing that exists is the last time that they were happy and blameless.

Afterwards, after the heat and desperation, Clark falls asleep, head tucked under Lex's chin, and Lex stays awake—always the same, every time. The only part of the ritual that he dreads comes in the morning, how clear Clark's eyes are when he first wakes, fumbles for a kiss, and then the way the realization slowly starts to creep back in, the old weight, a burden of grief and guilt that cleaves them apart the way only death ever can.

Clark dresses, and bends down for a final, restrained kiss, brushed across Lex's temple. "Take care of yourself."

He trudges off, back to his own prison of aloneness, and Lex doesn't react to the footsteps in the hall or the closing of the front door. Three hundred and sixty-four days will pass in separateness, three hundred and sixty-four days in which Lex will be more impervious than his father even imagined, while he waits for the chance to become himself again.


End file.
